Firehouse Oasis 118

26. Athena

Everything was going to plan other than the fact that Eddie wasn't here and the ensuing plan changes that that had caused. The drive went by easily, she dropped Buck and Chim off with no trouble, and she drove towards the gun shop with no problem.

The issues started as soon as she actually got to the gun shop.

The first problem was parking. Normally, Athena would pull the car into the woods or behind a dumpster to park. Somewhere that it wouldn't be easily spotted, especially from the road, except that she couldn't do that today. There were fences blocking off the road from the trees so that was out and then there was no back or side parking lot for the gun shop. It was just a few parking spots in front of the small shop. So, she parked in one of those spots, hoping that no one would come by and if they did then hopefully they wouldn't question the cop car.

That wasn't even really an issue as much as it was an inconvenience though. No, the real issue came when she was heading into the store itself.

She'd gotten out of the car and headed around to the back of the store because the front doors were all boarded up. The back door however, opened easily. It'd clearly been previously held shut by a chain and lock, except those were just hanging from the door handles now with the lock unlocked.

That was certainly convenient for the purposes of getting in. It was a little bit weird that it was just hanging open like that, but it likely meant that someone had already been through here and had left it like that. She didn't think anyone would be staying here while keeping the doors basically unlocked and wide open, so she wasn't too worried about it.

She pulled open the door, which gave way easily, and moved to take a step inside. It was then that she heard it. There was yelling coming from not too far away, and it was definitely adult yelling.

"Go check over there!" One voice ordered, sounding far away, "and you over there!"

Then another voice, sounding a bit closer, "Where'd you go you little bitch?! Come out now and it'll be a lot easier on you."

Athena slipped inside the gun shop silently, reaching through the door's thin opening and quickly looping the chains through the handles again and clicking the lock into place. Then, for good measure, she used her powers to melt the lock enough so that it wouldn't be able to open with or without a key. It wouldn't exactly stop anyone from getting into the store, but it'd definitely discourage anyone from trying, plus it would definitely slow down whoever did try.

Well, shit. She thought to herself. Other people, adults by the sound of it, were definitely not part of the original plan.

It would be ok though, she just needed to find a gun, then her disguise would be a lot better. Even if she actually ran into whoever these adults were, she had a good chance of walking away unscathed. People in the past had generally wanted to avoid police officers, and she imagined it wouldn't be much different in today's world. Plus there was a good chance that they weren't even heading in her direction, or that they'd stop here even if they were. Plus, grabbing the gun she wanted shouldn't take long. She liked her chances of just continuing on as planned.

So she started searching around the shop, looking for the kind of pistol that she'd seen police officers wear. As it turned out, they didn't just have guns sitting on the shelves and lining the walls, no the guns were in locked cases behind the checkout counter. Which made sense, she figured that whoever had owned this shop hadn't wanted whoever walked in to just be able to pick up a gun and walk out without their permission. The shelves were full of other things, including gun parts, bullets, and gun maintenance and cleaning supplies. She grabbed some cleaner and some bullets for the type of gun she was hoping to get and shoved them in her pocket.